Watch as Waffles tries not to get raped by bums, freeze to death, or get beaten to death by the cops. Our money is on the bums.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Friendly Advice

Here is some friendly advice for people just starting out in poker: STOPPPP!!!! Ok. Perhaps that is not good advice. It is a difficult game though.

See you begin playing the game and maybe you have one bad night and you tilt off and go up levels. Bust a few bankrolls. You then eventually get a little smarter and you do not let a bad day bother you.

You are then ready for weeks. This is the stage I am at now. I can handle the bad night or the evil loss at an MTT. I know tomorrow there is another game. The part that gets me now is when your going along for a week and you see your bankroll slowly declining all week long. You are getting bad beat after bad beat. You shrug them off but the cumulative effect gets to you. I am sure there are plenty of people who can shrug this off too. I have seen and heard of people who have had months of variance. Possibly even years?

Even the most hardened poker player has to have trouble dealing with this. I have spoken to several professional players who have taken huge swings in variance and it has absolutely effected them. So as I look back I can see that I handle tilt much better than ever before and as I look ahead I see I have a ways to go. It only gets harder as you become a better player in some ways. The beats you take stop becoming coin flips edges that you lose and people end up having to beat you when they are 70-95% behind. So while I have a ways to go I am happy with how far I have come. I really appreciate people like Wes and JJOK who are willing to open their souls and let us know when they fuck up. See you back on the felt at the end of the week. Until then - Be careful out there.

5 Comments:

DA's gave me the heads-up on some pros who don't take bad beats too well. We all dot it, especially me. Hindsight is always 20/20 and, in the end, we see things as how things should have turned out. We all contradict ourselves to some extent, and if someone says they never mind bad beats, I'd say they were lying, that, or they have absolutley no competitive edge in their game whatsoever. No one likes losing, and if it's to unfair (statistically incorrect) situations, then it's even worse. I even remember reading on Dug's site him saying something to the effect of, "We're all donkeys at times, even me." So I take extra enjoyment out of donking out on someone and think to myself, "That makes up for that last bad beat." Bad way of thinking since, yes, I had my $ in with the worse hand, but it makes up for the variance that is poker. You'll win the unfair ones in the future as well, just like Jordan referred to.Later

Weeks? Try months, buddy. That's where I am at now, I think approaching two or maybe two-and-a-half months of losses. It is very tough. I'm glad to see that you recognize the hardness of it all, and I'm sure you'll get back in there soon enough.